Sarah Taylor: Neurodivergent People Are Wired for Awakening
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: The following transcript may contain typographical errors or other mistakes due to inconsistencies in audio quality, background noise, or other factors. We cannot guarantee its precision or completeness. We encourage you to use this as a supplement to your own notes and recollection of the session.
Tami Simon: Welcome, friends, to our series on Spirituality and the Neurodivergent Mind. My guest is Sarah Taylor, an awakening trail guide and intuitive energy healer who specializes in working with people who identify as neurodivergent and highly sensitive. Sarah Taylor is an award-winning actor and stand-up comedian who started meditating in order to manage her own anxiety and stage fright. And then the experience of meditation opened her to a series of spiritual awakenings, and we’ll learn more about that. And then in her fifties, she discovered a life-changing insight that she herself is neurodivergent. She describes herself as being autistic and having ADHD, and how this discovery has been so important.
Sarah, you say, and I want to start here—welcome—that discovering your neurodivergence was as big a deal in your life as the spiritual awakening process that you went through. And I thought, really? How, how is this, how could, why was it such a big deal for you?
Sarah Taylor: Almost as big, almost as, I mean, what can be more profound than realizing you’re not separate from reality and awakening. But it felt like a really important piece to the awakening journey, which I find is never ending.
You know, post awakening, there is continued embodiment, and the truth that we see about ourselves. And, I’ve always been a seeker of truth. So learning this about myself just made my life make sense. I understood relationships more. I understood my difficulties growing up. I used to have meltdowns. Seams on my socks or tags or brushing my hair—huge meltdowns. And I sort of took on this identity as a very young child of being bratty or difficult. And certainly my family probably saw me that way, but it was overstimulated, you know. I was a bit of a weird kid, you know, playing by myself and feeling very awkward about how to learn how to do this human being thing.
And it kind of made sense that the dots started connecting. And you know, I feel that neurodivergent people are wired for awakening. So I also just began really remembering how open and porous and sensitive I really was as a child, and that I had to kind of start shutting it down. And, awakening was a process of remembering, of opening something again that was already open. And it just made sense, suddenly things made sense in a way that they hadn’t before.
TS: Now, at one point I did a series called Waking Up: What Does It Really Mean? And I interviewed 23 people about spiritual awakening. And I want to add you now to the numbers of people that I’ve asked this question to, which is, tell me what spiritual awakening means to you.
ST: Spiritual awakening is waking up from the sense of a separate self and waking up to the nature of reality, the ground of our being. That there’s just one thing happening. It’s all soar, God, Brahman, true nature. And so this can happen in stages. You know, people start to see through the sense of self that there may be something more vast: their boundless awareness, they’re the witness, their pure consciousness, and then that moves into the heart. You know, that’s kind of a head awakening. It moves into the heart and seeing the nondual nature of reality that I am you, Tami, and you’re me, and I’m the tree outside my window. I am everything and everything is me. It’s the one taste, as they say in Dzogchen. So, that’s what I see awakening as. But it’s not only punctuated by vivid moments of realization, but it’s also a gradual process for everybody who embarks on this journey.
TS: Now, when you say neurodivergent people are wired for awakening. Tell me more about that and how you see that. And when you say wired, you mean our brain patterning, or what do you mean by that?
ST: Yeah. Our system’s very porous, very open. I, as a kid, I knew what my mom was thinking. I knew that there was more in the room with people than what they were presenting. So I could see through layers and see through these things that I was told were the way things are.
And so that’s really helpful for a seeker on the spiritual path to be penetrating truth. But there is an openness, a porousness that I think neurodivergent people, especially like late-diagnosed autistics and ADHDers, tend to cover up this sensitivity from a young age. And often, like a lot of the people I work with are so sensitive and all they needed was a bit of meditation or they got on the right path for them and something popped for them. And they feel so naked and so raw. And, you know, sometimes with holistic-brained people, it’s a little more of a process to sort of poke through and see that you’re actually something beneath the sense of self that you take yourself to be, and that others see.
I think that neurodivergent and sensitive people are, they’re like right there. It’s a hair’s breath away. What I find is it’s the integration of spiritual insights. It’s the healing, it’s the integration, it’s embodiment, it’s connecting to the body. A lot of neurodivergent people aren’t really connected to their body. I was completely clumsy and didn’t really feel like I had a body, and then learned how to like be in it, you know? So, I think there’s some sort of spiritual dimension that’s, it’s poking through, shining through underneath the surface. I could be wrong, but I think more people are starting to talk about this too.
TS: Now here’s a question. It’s going to sound a little bit like I’m talking in a circle, but I know you’re going to be able to follow me here, Sarah, which is, hey, hit me. I’ve heard it described, and in my own experience as well, have felt that with deep, I might just call them, not even use the word like awakening, but transformational experiences. I feel rewired by the experience.
ST: Yes.
TS: Meaning I don’t see and process the world the same way after the experience than before. There’s a different kind of processing happening. Openness.
ST: Absolutely. Yeah.
TS: So that changes people, these experiences. So you are describing ways in which you connected dots that you were actually neurodivergent from a young age. So my question is, does our inherent neurodivergence from a very young age make us more open to these experiences? Or did these experiences change your wiring in such a way that you became no longer neurotypical because you were so changed by the experiences?
ST: Yeah. I get what you’re saying. I think, yeah.
TS: Wonderful. Well that’s a start there. We are connecting there.
ST: Thank God, Tami! How long you’ve been doing this?
TS: Yes, I know. I know, but still it’s so hard, you know?
ST: No, it’s really hard to put it into words. But you know, I think, what is neurodivergence anyway? A lot of people will probably ask that listening to this, once there’s been a profound seeing, an insight, a realization, there is a rewiring of our brains. So perhaps people who have undergone some sort of inner transformation are neurodivergent. I think for a lot of late-diagnosed or late-realized neurodivergent people, it’s going back to early childhood and seeing that these things, the certain traits of autism or ADHD were present. And then, you know, what does that mean then after an insight, after a realization, after awakening? I mean, does it even matter? I did wonder that like, you know, what’s the big deal? I’ve been on a journey of sort of peeling back the layers of who I am over the years anyway, so this is just one more, one more thing that I’m seeing. But you know, as I was telling you, I just somehow knew that I was going to be talking about this, so I sought out a diagnosis.
TS: Tell us about that journey. First of all, what was going on inside of you that made you seek a diagnosis and then learning about the diagnosis? How did that help you connect specifically the dots in your life? Both.
ST: Yeah. I think for me at this point where I was looking back on my life and wanting a little bit of clarity or looking at my current life was, as far as burnouts go, and burnouts are something that happened to a neurodivergent person because I, you know, we’re not necessarily set up to function in a world that demands certain things, being so porous, so open, and getting overstimulated quite easily.
We might need more rest. We need breaks. We need to move our body. I was having these throughout my life, these burnouts where I would go, go, go and function as, you know, a normal person of society, normal. And then just hit a wall where I could barely function. And some of these burnouts lasted several years.
Now with the spiritual path and how it began unfolding, these awakenings, these realizations, everything became much smoother, right? So there weren’t these burnouts, these long periods of time, because there was a natural unmasking that was happening—post realization, post awakening—of all these adaptations falling away, right?
That happens with spiritual realization. We see through that sense of self we thought we were and all the adaptations to get by in the world and to be a separate entity start dissolving more and more and more. So, what was left was me sort of still kind of being awkward in social situations, the way I sort the importance of things. I mean, of course, post awakening it all became kind of one thing. Noticing executive dysfunctions. I mean, just getting out of the house, it’s always been difficult for me. The burnout, the way I engage in relationships. You know, there was something kind of nagging.
I had a weird social interaction with a friend, and I came home and I just heard this voice say, you’re autistic. And I was like, oh, maybe that’s it. Because there was still something, I mean. Post awakening there is this, as they say, the peace that passeth all understanding, right? There’s that core of equanimity that I couldn’t be touched no matter what was going on, but yet I became more sensitive. And what was really happening was the layers were just falling. I wasn’t adapting. I was just like more and more and more sensitive over the years. So I became like the princess in the pea walking this razor’s edge of like, you know, like hurt.
You’d feel it like kind of rubbing up against a situation, or sensory input would just feel like too much. And I began to think, is this an awakening thing? Is this because, you know, there’s been a profound seeing that I’m this sensitive now? Like, what’s going on? But really what I’ve learned, it’s just been the continual unmasking of the adaptation strategies which we’re covering up the fact that I have neurodivergent wiring.
TS: One thing I’d love to ask you, as someone who I’ve been coming more into, acknowledging a high level of sensitivity, one of the things I’ve become aware of is when is that just truly what’s happening? Okay. That’s interesting. And do I use that ever in situations to get sympathy from people or even manipulate a situation? I’m very sensitive. You know, I’ve noticed when I start talking about my own sensitivity, I’m like, I don’t know if I really want to talk about this to people. Like maybe I should just keep it to myself. So I’m curious what—I know you work with a lot of sensitive people—what your counsel is for people who identify with this high level of raw sensitivity to be really clean about it.
ST: Yeah. Yeah. I think we have to get honest with ourself first, and so it almost doesn’t matter if nobody else understands, or we don’t necessarily have to explain it to anyone, but we have to sort of drop the shame and the should around acknowledging that like, you know what, this situation is too much for my nervous system right now. I’m overstimulated. This scent is way too much. So to get honest with yourself about, you know, just owning that this is a truth for you. And I do notice that a lot of people have some sort of shame around it or feeling like we should be different. We should just like suck it up and put on our big girl panties and just deal with it, it’s life, you know, which leads to burnout. And it leads to overstimulation. And, you know, who knows? You might become a little more reactive in a situation, you know, with a loved one as a result because you’re overstimulated. So, yeah. So, well, it’s good that you notice that you’re sensitive.
TS: But I hear what you’re saying is really, first of all, just starting with telling yourself the truth about what’s going on in your experience. Now you use this phrase in describing yourself as discovering that you were a high masking neurodivergent woman. Tell me what you mean by masking and what the masking behaviors were that you identified you’d taken on.
ST: Yeah, masking can sound like it’s, you know, putting on a facade or something about identity, but it’s really just masking these traits so that we don’t feel ostracized, so that we can be included, so that we can live a full life. I mean, I was in the stand-up comedy scene and I just, my discomfort with a lot of overstimulation in it would just get masked because it was like, well, this is what you do, this is what you do. And then I would burn out. So it’s masking our natural sensitivities. It’s masking our natural rhythms, you know? Sensitive and neurodivergent people have rhythms that might be different from neurotypical people. Masking our wants and our needs, how we really feel about something, you know, speaking up, our authentic expression. Just being authentic. And as you know, neurodivergent people, we tend to get told that we said the wrong thing or we didn’t quite do the thing the right way.
And so there’s years of sort of layers that build up of oh yeah. Right. You don’t do that in a social situation. Or oh, right. You don’t say that in a conversation, or you don’t bring that up. So these are all ways that people can mask. Or stimming, you know, a lot of neurodivergent people have a lot of energy running through their system and, you know, there’s—I’m sure you’ve heard of stimming, which is just moving the body. And you know, we go to a meditation retreat and we’re told like, be completely still. And I would feel all this energy moving, moving through me. So, at times throughout my life, whether I was in the meditation zendo or at a meeting or whatever, I was suppressing this desire to maybe move and sort of disperse that energy.
So, making eye contact, neurodivergent, especially autistic people, when I look into somebody’s eyes, I get so much information about the person that it’s like a really intense experience. So I mask that natural desire to look away or not make direct eye contact. By learning how to make direct eye contact, I’m masking my natural rhythm to look away in a conversation, although right now is fine. You have great hair.
TS: Thank you. I like your glasses and I like actually looking into your eyes as well. I hope that’s okay. Now, I never heard of stimming before. So that’s new to me. So are you saying that the masking is keeping our body frozen when our natural instinct is to let the energy move? What is this word stimming come from? What does it mean?
ST: It means self-stimulation. People just call it stimming. You can use fidget toys. You can move your hands. I think I, you know, as a child I had a lot of, like, flapping my hands and moving, and I had little tics and things that I would do. And I learned how to be more still, which isn’t a bad thing on one level, right? If you’re working with a Zen master again. But we have to kind of look at like, am I suppressing something? Am I suppressing something natural?
TS: How do you relate to quote unquote masking now? I mean, do you have an awareness and you make a choice? Like, oh, you know, I don’t think I’m going to shake right now in this experience.
ST: Right.
TS: I think I’ll shake later. Or how do you view it?
ST: Yeah, exactly. I think there’s some functional masking that we do. Like it’s agreed upon in our society that we smile when we greet each other. I mean, that feels natural to me. I’m just using that as an example. But you know, there are certain ways that we operate to be part of a society. Like how are you, Tami? You know, asking that, that’s kind of what we do. So, I always encourage people to unmask, but you know, there can be this defiant thing. Like, screw it. I’m not going to ask people how they are just because socially I’m, you know. So that’s a choice, of course, but we’re all adapting in ways that might not feel natural. And so my advice to people is, look at, you know, does the mask, does unmasking cause harm? We don’t want to cause harm to ourself, of course, but it’s not going to kill me to make small talk with the checkout person at Trader Joe’s. And, you know, small talk isn’t really one of our favorite things. We like to have conversations like this, like we’re having right now, just going deep and talking about big ideas and that type of thing. So, yeah.
TS: Well, I’ll share with you a very brief example. I was at a party on Friday night and somebody said to me, how are you? And I looked away and I paused, and during that pause I was checking my inner experience, and I was so many different things.
ST: Oh, yeah.
TS: And it took me a while before I was able to find a sentence and respond, because I wanted to honestly answer how I was and it wasn’t—you know? And so at a certain point then, as I was still checking in inside, this gentleman put his arm on me and said, are you okay? And I was like, yeah, I’m okay. I’m just trying to, you know, I’m definitely okay. I’m just trying to answer your question honestly.
ST: Yeah. Yeah.
TS: But anyway, that was an example of not being masked, and it led to a good connection actually, as I explained. But, interesting. Now, Sarah, I want to see if we can bring a little more nuance. I mentioned that you are a late-diagnosed autistic woman, but that you also have ADHD, and I wonder, first of all, if you could parse the characteristics of those two different aspects of being neurodivergent from your own experience.
ST: Yeah, from my own experience, well, I was diagnosed with what would later be referred to as ADHD when I was a kid. So I was called a hyperkinetic kid, which is what they called us back then. And my family didn’t want to put me on medication, so we adjusted my diet a little bit and then we all kind of forgot about it because there were so many kids in my family and there was a lot going on. So I forgot about the ADHD until a few years ago, which is very ADHD of me.
ADHD is an inability to regulate attention. There can be a feature to it that is a lot of energy. I have had that. The ADHD brain doesn’t quite know what is most important in a given situation. We’re motivated by a fire in our pants, like either a deadline, we wait until the very last minute, or it has to be something that we engage in that is very, very interesting to us, which leads to a lot of issues. So, thankfully, meditation was incredibly interesting to me. So I dove in. But, people with ADHD have time blindness, which kind of is a feature of spiritual awakeness, you know, of time kind of collapsing and you’re just in the present moment all the time.
But that can really lead to issues, thriving on chaos, lots of ideas, a wide mind that can hold a lot of different possibilities. And, you know, traditionally we know with autism that it’s a little bit more about rigidity and structure, black-and-white thinking, a need for repetitive movement or repetitive rituals, kind of an awkwardness with social situations. They do overlap. And I am not a neurodivergence expert. I just discovered this about myself a couple of years ago.
So it’s a process, but I just find that there are two parts of my brain, one that loves chaos—like you should see my desk right now, Tami—and then another part of me that my system, my wiring, that really craves ritual and something that grounds me every day, or else I can feel a little off sometimes. And of course then I flow and I’m present with feeling off. But, you know, if I had my druthers, I would stick to a type of routine. So there are a lot of auti-HD people out there, and there is an overlap. There are distinctions.
TS: Now this statement that really landed for me, neurodivergent people are wired for awakening. Let’s try the opposite statement for a moment. Aren’t neurotypical people also wired for awakening? Aren’t all humans wired for awakening? So I’m curious how you understand that, because maybe the process is different for neurotypical people. Question mark? I don’t know.
ST: I don’t know. Let’s explore this. Yes, being a human being, we’re all meant to awaken to our true nature. We all have the capacity to, we all have Buddha nature. So, it’s accessible to us, right? I feel that neurodivergent people, and it’s been my experience, and with the people I’ve worked with over the years, that either have identified as neurodivergent or highly sensitive or have been later realized, tapping into true nature is, I don’t want to say that’s the easy part, but it’s right there. And, what I find with people is they miss over it. They miss these moments of real presence, of their essence because they’re trying so hard to fit in with this world.
Now with neurotypical brain people, I mean, yeah, there are lots of people who are awakening. I think it’s just that there is an exquisite sensitivity that this neurodivergent wiring makes it a little easier for us to open to the undifferentiated, to the unconditioned, and also to multiplicity, the multiplicitous nature of the spiritual dimension. You know?
I mean, it struck me with what you were saying about answering that person at a party. We’re complex processors, so it’s like somebody might ask you, how are you doing? Well, there’s so much going on. Like, where do we start? And it could take me a minute before I answer. Neurodivergent people seem to have access to the multiple dimensions of reality, because there’s a lot going on.
TS: Now, I realize, of course, Sarah, that you’re not a neuroscientist and that you’re coming at this from your own personal experience, but also that I think you’re quite a sophisticated thinker, and you’re very well read, and you’ve gone deep down the rabbit hole of neurodivergence and spirituality.
As I said to you, you were tailor made—ha ha—for this series. But my question is, what is it in our neurological platform, if you will, from your understanding, that for neurodivergent people creates this openness, this porousness, this natural affinity with multidimensional awareness? How do you—what is it? What’s that affinity based on? What’s going on?
ST: Well, I’d love to talk to a neuroscientist about this, but I have read that for neurodivergent people, particularly I guess autistic people, and I could be wrong, it could be for all neurodivergent people, but I was reading that our parietal lobe has more folds, leading to less of a sense of self. And, you know, as we’re on the spiritual path, we see through our ideas and our sense of what the self is. So the self seems to be a little less defined in our experience. So that could be one thing; there are differences with the frontal lobe. It’s a wiring, so to your question earlier it’s not like it’s going to go away, you know?
TS: What, do you mean it’s not?
ST: The neurodivergent wiring, with one spiritual opening.
TS: I got you.
ST: Opening or awakening. It’s not going to change that we’re neurodivergent, you know? Well, now we’re divergent because we’ve awakened or we’ve deepened on the spiritual path. But that initial wiring that apparently we’re born with, I mean, that’s still going to be in effect. Our relationship to it, how we work with it, how we move through the world, that’s where we can turn our attention to.
TS: I’m going to ask you a kind of challenging question.
ST: Sure.
TS: Because when I was reading about the progressive spiritual awakenings that you went through and then in your experience you hit a place of an abiding quality of realization. I thought, hmm, I’d really like to know more about that, the abiding part. What is abiding in your experience?
ST: Yeah, prior to this shift, it was, the lens of consciousness seemed to open and then shut back down. There was a vast opening and then after a few months, a shutting down and conditioning coming up and trauma and working through it. So it was that, “I got it, I lost it” phase that a lot of people kind of go through. But with this shift that occurred, there was never any doubt afterward of what I am or my access to it and it being right here. So this sense of this vast infinite spaciousness that I am, and within that is the play of phenomenon. You know? Thoughts and feelings and sensations and conditioning and trauma and reactions and all of it playing against this wider, more vast and fundamental backdrop. So that has been my experience, which doesn’t mean there hasn’t been a lot of unraveling, some scars and knots and conditioning. And just like this, discovering that I’m neurodivergent and having fun chewing on this now and what that could mean.
You know, sometimes people say, well, is awakening sudden or gradual? I think for some people there are sudden distinctive moments and it’s always gradual, you know, because there’s always a deepening, there’s always more falling away, there’s always more embodiment. So this abiding sense of what I am doesn’t go anywhere. And that’s sort of like that equanimity, that canvas upon which everything is arising, is always there. And, you know, experiences vary. Different things are happening, but that doesn’t go away.
TS: You mentioned when quote unquote, “samskaras” arise. Can you explain to people your understanding of samskaras and maybe give an example of the arisal of one post this abiding awakening and how it became metabolized, or you worked with it in your own experience?
ST: Yeah. Yeah. I’d say, you know, relationship is our greatest teacher, right? So I would get to a point in my relationship where I would just sort of, ah! You know, burst with this frustration. And, you know, now looking back, I probably was having sensory overload, meltdowns, but also woven into that were this conditioning of having gone through childhood trauma and having these habits of responding and reacting when I seem to be challenged or, you know, you’re in a difficult conversation with someone, being attacked, right?
So I would notice that, wow, I’ve had this profound awakening, this profound seeing, but my loved one can really push my buttons. Right? So it’s sort of, you know, getting honest with myself like, this is what’s happening. I’ve lost my connection to something here. It’s gone way in the background. Now, instead of being foreground, it’s like it’s still there.
You know, I would be in reactivity and also feel the great, spacious awareness of what I am, but yet there’s this, why am I habituated to respond this way? So then I turn my attention to the actual mechanism within me that wants to respond that certain way and soften with it, maybe after the conversation with the loved one, then sitting in meditation and being with the trigger. And what I have found is when we bring a love and an honesty, a compassion to what is happening, it can really begin to melt our conditioning. We want to see through it, right? Like that’s not who I am, and that’s learned behavior. And it causes harm. It causes harm to my loved one and me, right, when I snap or whatever. But this clear seeing coupled with compassion and, you know, you hear this a lot, that just awareness will eventually melt these knots, which I think it does.
But awareness has a dry quality to it. We have to bring in the quality of compassion. Compassion for ourselves, seeing where it came from, bringing ourselves back to these younger days when that reactivity first arose. And being with that aspect of ourself. I did a lot of kind of parts work or, you know, different versions of myself, which sounds paradoxical. If you’ve woken up from the sense of the separate self, why are you talking to your inner child? And, that never, at a certain point, the paradox never bothered me. It was just like, well, you know what? That’s an energy that’s here in my system. It’s an energy template that’s running, and I’m going to just give it love and give it the words that it wanted to hear back then at five or four, at eight years old.
So for me and with a lot of the people I work with, there’s this welcoming aspect. It’s not this kind of dry penetrative insight. You know, this causes me suffering. It’s not who I am, it’s impermanent, the three marks of existence, right? It’s really, you know, let’s bring some love to it and acknowledge that it’s here and that compassion and awareness can sort of begin to melt it.
TS: It’s very helpful and I think, Sarah, as we’re talking, I’m getting more of the sense of sort of the inner map, if you will, that you’re sharing, because I think sometimes when people hear an abiding spiritual awakening that doesn’t go with a sensory overload, meltdown, freak out, like, how could these things coexist? And yet you’re describing in this gradual aspect of awakening that can be there, even when there’s been a huge sudden shift that, oh, there are still often things like a sensory overload meltdown, but with love and awareness and welcoming that can metabolize and process through. Did I say that accurately?
ST: Yeah. Yeah. It gets digested. I mean, you know, it’s been about ten years since that nondual awakening we’re speaking of, and, you know, conditioning’s getting softer and softer and softer and softer. It’s going to continue until we die, you know? But yeah, I think that’s a real misunderstanding, or people really believe these myths that with any type of awakening, it’s a one and done. It’s a light-switch moment. Everything’s groovy now. And we can see spiritual teachers get into trouble, too. You know, oh gosh, their conditioning’s coming up. Oh, their addictive tendencies around money and sex and misconduct. Isn’t that interesting? They’re so awake. So I just am completely dedicated to keeping an eye to my conditioning, like until I go, because there’re going to be subtler and subtler ways in which it emerges.
TS: Now you work with many different kinds of people who identify as sensitive neurodivergent and more people who are looking for an awakening trail guide. I’m curious specifically though, about people who are in their adult life who are discovering, you know, I think like Sarah, I’ve been a high masking autistic. I think that’s true. I’m just starting to see this. What do you see as the biggest challenges those people are facing, and how do you help them?
ST: Yeah, there’s usually a lot of grief, you know, like what could my life be like if I had known, of course. There are many people who just feel like, hey, you know, I’ve just figured out how to move through the world. This is how I am, whatever. Maybe they have a job that really fits them and their relationships.
People have been understanding and for whatever reason it’s like, okay, but for a majority of people, there’s a real grief that needs to be reckoned with. And so, I hold space for that grief, of we have to really honor what we’ve lost in order to step into what is present and what is here, you know?
And just helping people become more authentic. You know, the spiritual path helps us to become more authentic anyway. And once one realizes that they’re neurodivergent, they have neurodivergent wiring, even if it’s late in life, they’re on an even deeper journey to become authentic, and they of course overlap.
So I notice that when I hold space for people to just make room for however they are, as, you know, effed up as they are, or angry as they are, or grief stricken or weird or whatever it is that they’re kind of resisting a little bit. And we sit in it, often people will drop right down through into true nature.
I know a woman who, late sixties, has had some profound shifts in consciousness and through our talking began to realize, oh wow, I’m autistic, and she sat with her grief, and sat with this recognition of this. And she’s just dropped right into a deeper, nondual state that’s been abiding since this recognition.
So, look, we’re on the spiritual path, wanting to recognize our true nature. But I think the path is also about recognizing our personhood and that it’s both, you know, our absolute nature and our relative nature, our pure fundamental essence and our unique individuality. And, that together, that brings an integrated life.
TS: One of the things I wonder about is the utility and also the lack of utility and even harm that comes from labeling ourselves in all different kinds of ways. And you know, I even think of everything I went through. I thought, you know, androgynous, my sexual orientation. How am I going to describe myself to people? And, you know, can I just be me please? But, you know, yes, I have labels and I can do all that. And now I’m in this process of exploring my own neurodivergence and all the possible labels and which ones fit. And do they fit forever or do they just fit now? And part of me is like, really? How useful is it? Or is it just like, why would I put this mysterious being in this box? Is it good? And I’m curious how you see that.
ST: Yeah, it’s a great question and I wondered that, too. I mean, I think over the years there was something a little nagging where I was like, I wonder if. I wonder if I’m autistic. And then I’d be like, well, who cares now? Right? So that night that I heard that voice and I just went, oh, I’m meant to go down this path and learn about this. Look, labels can stifle us and box us in and they can also set us free. I look at it like, and this is probably my autistic wiring, I’m like, oh, there’s certain sets of behavior and ways of seeing that somebody with my wiring has. So it’s really helpful for me to learn about that and learn about all the ways that I see things differently or might need something differently than the next person. I mean, I just remember years ago when somebody gave me the label codependent and I was like, oh, do I really want to take on another label?
And then I just looked at it like, hey, you know, there are these sets of behaviors that come with being codependent. I don’t really identify as a codependent, but I’m going to look at these behaviors and the kind of wiring that I have and let it be useful. It’s more knowledge, right? It’s, you know, if we’re a seeker of truth, why not learn what’s true about us?
And of course, many things can be true at once. You know, you’re not a neurodivergent person. And at the same time you are like, you’re more than that. And also, you know, there might be some limitations and some unique ways that you move through the world because of it. And so we can then start to embrace like, well what are the gifts of this? And what about it is a disability so that I can care for myself better? But you know, hey, some people, later in life they’ve already kind of figured that out. So, I think it’s going to be individual, it’s going to be unique for everybody.
TS: How have you experienced your neurodivergence as a disability?
ST: I think through my life I couldn’t handle a lot of things at once. A lot of demands at once. So hyperfocus is something that comes with ADHD and autism, and that’s that capacity, that ability to hone in on something and just lock in. Right? And it’s wonderful. It can be a great gift. And you know, I’m sure symphonies have been created from hyperfocus and companies and whatnot.
But it can be a disability when you are ignoring that like, you know, the garbage truck is outside, and you’re getting a ticket for having your car still parked out there. So there was always this feeling in my life, like there was too much going on because of the complex way I process. I can see several truths at once. I can, you know, I would often just become unable to move forward in my life at various times. Executive functioning, sometimes, you know, I was a waitress for a while. I don’t even—I know you used to waitress. I was a terrible waitress because I couldn’t prioritize. I think it was the ADHD in me. It was like, well, wait a minute, that table sat down, but then this table over here, and then like, well, who needs their water first? And I was overwhelmed. I was overstimulated.
Now, here I am, later in my life, I’ve just created a life that works for me. So, you know, I’m not experiencing the disability that I did in my youth. So, I do want to make it clear too, that there are people who have, there are different levels to autism. So I’m considered level one Asperger’s, which we don’t use anymore, and there’s level two and there’s level three. And, you know, some people don’t like the levels. It’s just about support needs. High support needs, low support needs. So someone like me is considered low support needs, but we still need support, you know? I work with an ADHD coach and she’s great, she just keeps me focused, keeps me on track. I check in with her every week because otherwise we, you know, especially after opening up to, you know, I really have time blindness. So it’s been helpful to be able to say okay, I need a little more support and so I’m going to get it.
TS: Okay. I just have two final questions for you, Sarah. The first one here is kind of a public service announcement, if you will, for people listening who may be at this moment in our conversation, like, wow, I’ve really heard a lot here. I feel very stirred up. I mean, just by talking about raw, exquisite sensitivity and overwhelm, let alone everything that’s been shared about spiritual awakening and different aspects of neurodivergence. I’m overwhelmed at this moment. What would you say to such a person to help them be with themselves in a loving way?
ST: Yeah. I think this compassion piece is so important and keeping things very, very simple. What do you know for sure in this moment? What do you need in this moment? And there’s something that I do with people when they feel like they’ve been pulled in a lot of directions and sometimes, when we take in a lot of information about something and we start to feel our energy leaking and going out towards the future and well, what does this mean?
And so, this is just a little exercise, if I may, of just bringing your attention to your center. So like from your heart down to your navel. Just imagining there, and you can close your eyes if you want, a sun, just a big, bright sun. This is your power center, your unique essence. And just breathing into this light and allowing it to get big. And as you exhale, just relaxing with this light and this power here, and you’re going to reclaim your power, all the energy that you’ve leaked and scattered and given away by saying yes when you meant no, or smiling when you didn’t feel like it.
We leak and scatter our energy when we ruminate on the past, or we obsess on the future when we haven’t been authentic. So take a deep breath into the center, and as you exhale, all your energy comes back to you now, effortlessly and easily. It just comes back. It’s yours. And you’re right here with your body, with your breath, and it’s safe to just be here right now as you are, and you don’t have to figure anything out. Just keep coming back to your body and your breath. Sort of a gathering up of oneself, you know?
And then I’d say, when you feel ready, start learning. There are wonderful creators on YouTube. You know, women tend to not get diagnosed with neurodivergence because we mask better. You know, that’s a really important, important point that I wanted to bring forward that gets missed, you know, and there are wonderful creators on YouTube talking about this.
Dr. Devon Price has a great book, Unmasking Autism. Jenara Nerenberg wrote a book called Divergent Mind, which can be kind of an open door into learning about this. And it’s being talked about more, you know, open up to friends, open up to loved ones, and you might be surprised. People say, hey, you know what? I think I’m autistic too, or you know what? That is me. I just got diagnosed. Didn’t want to tell anybody.
And there are a lot of people in perimenopause and menopause who are sort of waking up to the fact that they’re neurodivergent because they’re not masking anymore. Their sensitivity is increasing. And so there are a lot of people over the age of 40, male or female, just, you know, or nonbinary or gender fluid, realizing this, that, wow, you know, I’ve spent my whole life a certain way. And what if there’s a way to be more authentic? What if there’s something going on that is asking me to connect more deeply to my body and my own being?
TS: Alright, here’s the last thing I want to ask you. I’d love to get your perspective on this, which is, for two decades now, Sounds True’s worked with Eckhart Tolle, the author of The Power of Now, and he talks about something that he calls the flowering of human consciousness. And just in brief that more and more people are awakening, going through spiritual awakenings at this time, and that this is going to increase just like in the biological evolution on the Earth, there were a few flowers at a certain point, and then more flowers opened and more flowers, and that we’re going through this flowering. So when I hear you say neurodivergent people are wired for awakening, I wonder is the discovery of our neurodivergence and more and more potentially perhaps neurodivergent people being born, more of us recognizing and identifying with that, part of this evolutionary process that we’re in that’s connected to the evolutionary process of awakening. And how do you see that?
ST: I think it might be. I am of that mind that there are more of us and we’re realizing that there are more of us. So what are these structures that have been put in place for people with systems that don’t quite fit in it? And I do think there are more people awakening. I mean just, you know, 20 years ago when this was dawning for me, you know, as I mentioned to you, I couldn’t find a lot about post awakening terrain on YouTube or on the internet. And it’s all over the place. And the amount of people that come to me and say, I just downloaded this meditation app, and suddenly I’ve realized myself as luminous emptiness. What is going on? There are a lot of people who are awakening that don’t have context. But the point being that I think there are more people awakening and the divergent brain, perhaps it is an evolutionary thing. And as with evolution, it’s this balance that is trying to find its way. It could be, yeah.
TS: Sarah Taylor, thank you so much for being part of our series on Spirituality and the Neurodivergent Mind. I’ve really benefited a lot from talking with you. Thank you.
ST: Tami, thanks for having me. It’s been really, really a delight, so thanks.
TS: Thanks friends.